11 Benefits of Switching to Shopify Plus

In the increasingly competitive e-commerce market, businesses are always looking for solutions to expand and grow sustainably. Many businesses in Vietnam are currently facing difficulties when the current platform can no longer meet the development needs. Shopify Plus has emerged as a leading solution, helping businesses manage complex operations, scale quickly, without investing too much resources.

With the latest updates from Shopify Edition Summer 24' , Shopify Plus is increasingly asserting its position as a unified platform (Unified Commerce) for omnichannel development. Shopify Plus allows businesses to operate from D2C, B2B, retail and global markets on a single management system. Shopify Plus's powerful application and integration ecosystem not only helps businesses easily customize but also keeps up with market trends, optimizes customer experience and promotes outstanding growth.

This article will analyze in detail the specific benefits of switching to Shopify Plus, helping your business seize the opportunity for sustainable development in the digital commerce era.

See also: What is Unified Commerce? An upgrade of Omnichannel
See also: Shopify Summer Editions 2024: Top 10 Most Notable Updates

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is a premium solution package of the SaaS e-commerce platform Shopify, specifically designed for large businesses with more complex scalability, customization, and management needs.

Unlike standard Shopify plans, Shopify Plus not only offers all of Shopify's features, but also adds a host of tools and support to help businesses process thousands of transactions per minute, operate multiple stores at once, and easily expand internationally.

Shopify Plus is especially suitable for large businesses that want to optimize performance without having to invest in complex hardware infrastructure. Instead, Shopify Plus offers a fully managed cloud solution that reduces the costs of operations, maintenance, and software updates, while ensuring the highest levels of performance and security.

See also: 2024: How much does it cost to implement Shopify Plus?

Which businesses is Shopify Plus right for?

Shopify Plus is ideal for large businesses looking for a powerful e-commerce platform with flexible scalability. Specifically, Shopify Plus is suitable for:

• Large-scale or corporate businesses : Businesses with a large number of products and high transaction volume need a powerful platform to process thousands of orders per minute while ensuring performance and stability.
• International Brand : Shopify Plus supports managing multiple stores at the same time, integrating multiple languages ​​and currencies, helping businesses easily operate in international markets.
• Businesses that want deep customization : Shopify Plus offers flexible customization from the interface to complex backend processes, allowing businesses to automate many aspects of sales operations through tools like Shopify Flow and Scripts.
• Businesses looking for a cost-effective solution : With Shopify Plus, businesses can save on infrastructure costs, system maintenance, and receive 24/7 priority support, something that is difficult to achieve on other platforms.

With superior features and maximum support, Shopify Plus is truly a comprehensive solution for large businesses looking to grow rapidly and scale globally.

Benefits of switching to Shopify Plus for businesses in Vietnam

Scalability and performance

Shopify Plus is designed to provide powerful scalability, making it easy for large businesses to manage thousands of products and orders every day without compromising performance. The platform can handle up to thousands of transactions per minute without slowing down your site. This is especially important during peak periods like Black Friday or the holiday season when traffic spikes.

Another great benefit of Shopify Plus is that there are no limits on the number of products, bandwidth, or storage, allowing businesses to scale without worrying about overloading the system. The platform ensures that the site remains high-performance, no matter how large the order volume, helping businesses create a smooth and uninterrupted user experience.

With the latest updates from Shopify Edition Summer 2024, Shopify Plus has been upgraded to a unified commerce platform, helping businesses grow omnichannel seamlessly. This allows businesses to easily operate D2C , B2B, retail models, and expand to international markets from a single commerce management system.

With these scalability capabilities, Shopify Plus enables businesses to grow rapidly without worrying about technical limitations. This allows businesses to thrive not only in their domestic market but also expand globally, maintaining consistent performance and a great user experience regardless of the surge in transaction volume.

Integration capabilities

One of the biggest challenges for large businesses is managing disparate systems and processes. Shopify Plus offers powerful integrations with external tools and systems like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and marketing tools.

Advanced Automation

Shopify Plus offers powerful automation tools to help businesses save time and optimize operational processes. These tools help you minimize manual intervention, allowing you to focus on developing your business strategy and expanding your brand with ease.

Shopify Functions

Shopify Functions is a powerful new way to customize and extend the functionality of your Shopify store without relying heavily on third-party apps or complex code. Previously, to make advanced customizations, businesses had to use Shopify Scripts – a tool that required programming knowledge and was limited to customizing the checkout process.

Shopify Functions run on the server side and are designed to execute quickly, with a time limit of just 5ms, 100x faster than Scripts. This ensures that customizations don't impact performance, providing a smooth and efficient shopping experience for your customers.

Now, with Shopify Functions, you can extend the functionality of your entire store, beyond just the checkout page. Here are some examples of what you can do with Shopify Functions:

• Custom Discounts : Automatically apply discounts based on cart contents, loyalty status, or purchase history.
• Calculate shipping costs : Calculate shipping costs based on complex rules like weight, destination, and desired delivery speed.
• Control payment methods : Show or hide payment options based on order value, customer location, or other criteria.
• Product Bundling : Create and manage product bundles automatically with special prices and conditions.

Shopify Functions is gradually replacing Shopify Scripts and will officially stop supporting Shopify Scripts in August 2025.

Launchpad: Schedule campaigns

Launchpad is an automation tool exclusively for Shopify Plus users that lets businesses schedule, track, and manage events like sales campaigns, product launches, or flash sales. You can:

• Launch new products and update inventory across channels.
• Apply discounts to specific products or entire collections.
• Design and change the look and feel of automated campaigns.
• Automatically revert changes after event ends.

Launchpad helps you create a seamless customer experience during busy periods like Black Friday or the holiday season. You can also track the success of your event through the app's real-time analytics dashboard.

Shopify Flow: Automate Your Processes

Shopify Flow is an automation tool that helps optimize business processes, from order management to customer segmentation to marketing. Here are some examples of what you can automate with Shopify Flow:

• Inventory alerts : When inventory of a popular product drops below 10 units, Shopify Flow automatically sends a notification to your team to place a reorder.
• Segment customers for marketing campaigns : Create an automated process that tags customers who spend over $200 in a single order as “VIP” and adds them to an email list for exclusive offers.
• Post-purchase engagement : After a customer purchases a specific product, Shopify Flow can automatically send a follow-up email 7 days later with product instructions and a discount code for their next purchase.
• Automate your loyalty program : Set up automated processes to award customers points when they make purchases over a certain amount, refer friends, or leave reviews, helping to encourage repeat purchases and increase customer engagement.

Tools like Shopify Functions, Launchpad, and Shopify Flow not only save businesses time but also help optimize operational processes, thereby creating more value for businesses at scale.

Manage it all from a single dashboard

Shopify Plus supports omnichannel selling, from online stores, physical stores (POS), to over 100 social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and over 80 e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay. All of these sales channels are integrated into a centralized management system, allowing businesses to manage inventory, orders, and customer data from a single place.

This centralized management not only saves time and optimizes business operations, but also ensures consistency in marketing and sales strategies across all channels. In particular, omnichannel sales provide a seamless experience for customers, creating convenience and consistency regardless of which channel they shop from.

Sell ​​globally with Expansion Store

With Shopify Plus, businesses can easily expand internationally through Expansion Stores. Businesses can create and manage up to 10 independent stores from one account, each of which can be customized to serve a specific region or country. This allows you to create a localized experience for customers across multiple markets.

Additionally, Shopify Plus offers powerful internationalization tools like Shopify Markets, which allows businesses to optimize sales in up to 50 markets. With Shopify Markets, you can fully integrate local languages ​​and currencies, giving you the ability to customize products, pricing, and marketing strategies for each market.

Thanks to these features, businesses can easily attract new customers, grow revenue and affirm their brand position on a global scale while maintaining high operational efficiency.

B2B eCommerce Experience Design

If you run or plan to grow a high-volume B2B wholesale channel, Shopify Plus offers powerful tools to simplify management and optimize the buying experience for your business customers. Shopify Plus integrates new and improved features to help businesses sell more efficiently, eliminating the need to manage multiple stores, and unifying analytics, product catalogs, and order management.

Shopify Plus B2B Highlights:

• Company profile: You can create wholesale company profiles for partners with multiple branches and related buyers, making it easier to manage B2B customer information.
• Publish products and set prices: Provide a personalized shopping experience for B2B customers by creating custom product listings and price lists. You can set up flexible purchasing rules, percentage pricing, and discounts based on specific buyers or regions.
• Payment flexibility: To simplify the ordering process, Shopify Plus supports creating automatic payment terms, draft orders, and using stored credit cards and issuing invoices.
• B2B Payment: Wholesale prices will be displayed immediately during the quick checkout process, depending on the customer's company profile.
• Customer Account: B2B customers can log in to view wholesale prices, manage account information, track orders and purchase history.
• Customize your B2B buyer experience: You can personalize your B2B storefront for each market, with unique product categories and content tailored to the unique needs of each market. Shopify Plus also offers ready-made B2B themes like Trade, designed for wholesale and repeat purchases.

Headless Commerce Support

In Shopify Plus, you can adopt the Headless commerce model , which gives you complete control over the user interface. This means you can separate the user interface (front-end) from the e-commerce operations (back-end). This allows businesses to use any framework for the interface, creating a unique and customized shopping experience.

See also: Headless Commerce: Breakthrough e-commerce technology for Enterprise

See also: Shopify Hydrogen: Technology optimized for Headless Commerce

Create a personalized payment experience

Shopify Plus offers full checkout customization, previously available through checkout.liquid, allowing businesses complete control over layout, branding, and ordering process. However, as of August 2024, Checkout Extensibility has completely replaced checkout.liquid, becoming the sole customization method available exclusively to Shopify Plus users.

Checkout Extensibility is a powerful feature that allows businesses to not only customize their checkout page but also enhance the checkout experience in ways that standard Shopify plans cannot provide. It provides a set of customization tools that are fast, secure, and hassle-free to upgrade. Businesses can use the 400+ custom apps available for checkout, thank you, and order status pages to build experiences that fit their business needs.

Key benefits of Checkout Extensibility on Shopify Plus:

• Advanced Branding Customization : With the Branding API, businesses can sync the look and feel of their checkout page with their entire online store, making the shopping experience consistent and professional.
• Payment flexibility : Businesses can customize payment methods based on customer geographic location, cart value, or other criteria, providing convenience to buyers.
• Integrate a loyalty program : This feature allows businesses to offer special deals to VIP customers or let them redeem reward points for discount codes right at the checkout page, helping to personalize the shopping experience.
• Post-purchase utilities : Once the order is confirmed, businesses can use additional utilities such as:
• Upsell : Encourage customers to add products to their order after completing checkout.
• Sign up for a loyalty program : Invite customers to join a points or rewards program.
• Survey Request : Invite customers to complete a survey to collect feedback after checkout.

Checkout Extensibility provides maximum flexibility for large businesses looking to build custom checkout experiences while ensuring speed and efficiency. Furthermore, businesses can make these changes without directly touching the checkout.liquid code, ensuring a smooth and secure upgrade process.

With Checkout Extensibility, Shopify Plus offers greater freedom and convenience for businesses looking to optimize their checkout while maintaining consistency and high performance across their entire site.

High security standards

One of the most important factors for e-commerce businesses is security. Shopify Plus not only meets PCI DSS Level 1 standards – the highest level of security for online payment processing systems – but also integrates many advanced security measures to protect customer and business data. This ensures that transactions and personal information are always protected at the highest level, giving businesses peace of mind without worrying about cybersecurity issues.

The industry-leading security standards Shopify Plus offers include:

• SSL, TLS, and AES-256 : These encryption protocols help prevent unauthorized access to data in transit and at rest.
• MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) : Requires multiple authentication methods for access to the admin panel, helping protect administrator accounts from attacks.
• SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) : Supports integration with identity providers, enhancing security through user management across multiple systems.
• SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) : Simplifies provisioning and managing users across different systems, making account administration easier.
• Advanced fraud protection : Shopify Plus automatically identifies and blocks transactions that show signs of fraud, helping protect your business from financial attacks.
• Anti-bot protection : Prevent illegal activities from automated bots, protect businesses from DDOS attacks and other disruptive activities.
• Automatic backups : Shopify Plus ensures that your business data is always backed up automatically, minimizing the risk of data loss.

Additionally, Shopify Plus helps businesses comply with data protection regulations like GDPR , ensuring that businesses operate legally in managing their customers' personal information.

Shopify Plus Merchants Success Program

One of the most valuable benefits of using Shopify Plus is the Merchant Success Program – a comprehensive support program dedicated to businesses on this platform. With this program, your business will be supported by the Merchant Success team available 24/7, 365 days a year, ensuring that all technical and operational issues are resolved quickly and effectively.

When participating in the Merchant Success Program, businesses not only receive direct expert support via live chat or phone, but also receive help from a dedicated Launch Engineer. Launch Engineers will help you solve technical issues, from optimizing the user experience to assisting in the process of migrating from another e-commerce platform to Shopify Plus with ease.

Additionally, if you need to further enhance your user experience and optimize your store, Shopify Plus Agency Partners are always ready to assist. With professional advice from development and design experts, you can upgrade your store with unique design interfaces and custom coding to suit your business's specific needs. This helps your store not only stand out aesthetically but also optimizes operational performance, providing the best experience for customers.

Thanks to the Merchant Success Program, businesses on Shopify Plus can access not only cutting-edge technology but also comprehensive support to grow sustainably and scale in the global market.

Transparent costs and lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

Shopify Plus offers superior total cost of ownership (TCO). Unlike traditional platforms that require large investments in hardware, software, and IT staff, Shopify Plus offers a cloud-based SaaS solution at a fixed, predictable price. This model reduces TCO by eliminating the need for costly software upgrades, periodic security patches, and server maintenance.

Additionally, another strength of Shopify Plus is its transparent and predictable fee structure, which helps businesses avoid hidden fees and optimize long-term costs.

Transparent and competitive fee structure

• Monthly Fees : Shopify Plus has a flat fee that starts at $2,500/month for a 1-year plan and $2,300/month for a 3-year plan. Once monthly revenue exceeds $800,000, there will be an additional fee of 0.25%-0.4% of gross merchandise value (GMV), depending on your specific business revenue.
• Low transaction fees : If you use Shopify Payments, you’ll pay no transaction fees (0%), along with the lowest credit card fees on Shopify plans. This is especially helpful for businesses with high transaction volumes. Conversely, if you use a third-party payment provider, you’ll pay a 0.2% transaction fee per transaction, plus that provider’s fee, for example, 1.75% + 30¢ per transaction.

Optimize total cost of ownership (TCO)

Compared to competing platforms, Shopify Plus can help businesses save money in several key areas. Shopify conducted an independent study comparing major e-commerce platforms such as Adobe Commerce (Magento), BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The results showed that Shopify Plus reduced platform costs by 23%, operating costs by 19% thanks to built-in automation tools, and implementation costs by 33%.

Automation tools like Shopify Flow and Launchpad help businesses save time and resources, reducing their reliance on human resources to run marketing campaigns or manage inventory.

Beyond direct costs, Shopify Plus helps businesses minimize potential losses due to poor website performance, slow loading speeds, or complex checkout processes. This helps increase conversion rates, improve customer experience, and maximize revenue.

Additionally, Shopify Plus’ built-in security features, including PCI DSS compliance and fraud detection tools, help reduce the risk of cyberattacks, thereby minimizing the costs of security breaches. This helps businesses keep their data and transactions safe, while reducing the costs associated with risk management.

Shopify Plus is ideal for large businesses or those looking to scale quickly. With flexible customization, process automation, and robust multi-channel support, Shopify Plus helps businesses optimize costs and grow sustainably. If you’re looking for an e-commerce solution to meet your global expansion needs and handle high transaction volumes, Shopify Plus could be the answer.

If you are considering upgrading to Shopify Plus, contact Meowcart for advice and support.